


Countermeasures

by Bruteaous



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-04 21:17:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3090188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bruteaous/pseuds/Bruteaous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What happens if she remembers everything, sir?” </p><p>Greer maneuvered around Martine so he could be even closer to his precious super computer, his cool gaze never leaving the projector screen as a hard grin emboldened the lines of age on his face. </p><p>“Then we will do what we had originally planned to do in the beginning, my dear, and annihilate her.”</p><p>…where Shaw is basically the female Jason Bourne, gets amnesia and is working for Samaritan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i. when it all goes up in flames

Gunfire burst through the air in a familiar staccato rhythm that meant semi-automatic weapons nearby. There was also the sound of glass breaking as the windows of a small commercial boat tied to one part of the dock were shattered by bullets refracting off of the concrete parapet Root and Shaw were crouching behind for cover.  

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Sameen?” Root grinned at her, the dangerous glint already in her eyes that Shaw secretly loved, “it’ll be fun. Ten points for the knees or elbows, five for a foot or a gun hand.”

“You’re on,” Shaw said, matching Root’s excitement at the thought of seriously handicapping even more of their opponents.

Another sap in a suit chose that moment to round the corner, Glock raised and ready, but so was Sameen. Two clicks of the trigger and the man was on the ground, one oversized hand clutching at his bleeding knee while the other arm bled at the elbow. The more of these bastards they could ensure wouldn’t be coming back after them the next time, the better.

“Show off,” Root said fondly. 

“Ms. Groves, I hardly think now is the time for pandering to your amusement,” Harold chirped in their ears. “You both need to find a way to get to Mr. Reese and Fusco as soon as humanly possible.”

There was a three hundred foot stretch of open ground between their position in the middle of the marina and where Reese and Fusco were currently barricaded behind a towering heap of metal storage units close to the water’s edge. It was a no man’s land and one that they would have to cover if they were going to disable Samaritan’s assets and set up the final charges they needed to make the ship docked in the harbor and the new, improved servers it carried go boom.

Shaw had already rigged part of the IED she had spent all morning gleefully piecing together and now all there was to do was physically set the auxiliary charges and then get the hell out of dodge. She and Root were just waiting until the traffic from the rabble of Decima agents died down before making their move and had decided to enjoy themselves a little in the meantime.

However, the sooner they could cross the wide open expanse and finish the job, the better it would be for all of them. In the haze of gunfire, Shaw watched Root shoot the legs out from one Decima agent, then another and found that she was enjoying the manic fervor of the situation and just how beautiful Root was executing it far too much. Enough to be dangerously distracted by it and by _her_. In many ways, Shaw and Root were two peas in a pod.

They both enjoyed violence and mayhem and causing it for the right reasons and Root—against both of their better instincts—wanted to continue playing this game of target practice they’d been playing for the past five minutes now with any Decima agent stupid enough to try to overpower their position, but Harold was right. They had a job to do here and by the slight pout that came over her features, Shaw could tell Root knew that as well.

“On it, Harry,” Root said, kneecapping one more Decima agent for good measure before looking at Shaw for confirmation.

Sameen finished loading a fresh magazine into her Nano and nodded, “on three. One. Two. Three. Go!”

Shaw laid down covering fire and then they were both running as fast as they could around the wall and out into the blue. Bullets whizzed by, some benign and poorly aimed while most came so close they could feel the vacuum ‘whoosh’ of air as they just missed a shoulder, an arm, or the side of a torso. John saw Root and Shaw approaching before Fusco did, turned and immediately directed his gun at the agents aiming for them. Root reached the barricade of stacked containers first, Shaw right behind her.

“I hear you,” Root whispered.

She immediately reloaded her weapons and made to move out of the safety of the rows of metal storage containers they were using for cover and back out into the open, but John grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

“What are you doing?!” He asked, looking at her like he thought she had lost her mind or what was left of it.

“She needs us there.”

“Where?” Shaw grunted, pissed and back to shooting people again. 

“There,” Root pointed with one of her guns towards the opposite direction than they had come from where a fixed cargo crane sat right next to the water’s edge.  “Cover me?”

“Go on coco puffs, we’ve got you,” Fusco said, levelling a couple of shots in the basic direction of the answering gunfire.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Root said in an annoyed whisper.

Then she was running again. Shaw moved to follow Root back into the fray, but John held her back.

“She’s got this, Shaw. The Machine has her back.”

“You don’t know that,” Shaw countered, pulling her arm roughly out of his grasp.

“I know that we need you here to hold the line,” he said.

Shaw looked over her shoulder at Root. She’d reached the crane and now paused to return fire to the two Decima operatives who’d been shooting at her while she ran. Then both went down heavily like a ton of bricks and didn’t get back up. Shaw let out a deep breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and reloaded her weapon. For the moment, it seemed like John was right, Root didn’t need Shaw to have her back.

Already Root was bent over attaching one of the electric charges to the crane closest to the docked ship and programming it to blow the minute they pushed the button. It would be enough, the machine had assured Root because in addition to carrying a couple hundred state of the art servers to expand Samaritan’s view beyond just the Americas, the trawler was also carrying a couple tons of banned and unstable chemicals to one of Decima’s weapons laboratories in Jersey.

 All it would take was a little push and all of Greer’s ambitions for growth would go up in flames. It would give Team Machine the advantage they desperately needed to level the playing field against Samaritan for the time being. Unfortunately, Decima knew that too which was why Greer had more than tripled his security on the premises in anticipation of their arrival. Accordingly, John, Fusco, and Shaw were finding it difficult to hold their position and keep a clear perimeter around Root at the same time.

Bodies just kept coming and finally falling and Shaw was beginning to doubt that she’d brought enough ammunition for this trip. The minute she or John or Fusco ran out of bullets they would be sitting ducks and Shaw didn’t want to think about what would become of them when that happened.

Root quickly and methodically worked through arming the charges. Despite the heavy promise of death and the adrenaline pumping through her veins, her fingers remained steady while they typed in the correct codes, watching as the status lights on the side of the little black boxes turned from red to green in quick succession. Just a few moments longer and they could get gone.

Time it seemed, though, wasn’t on their side.

_Danger: Threats Imminent. Reinforcements Estimated to Arrive In: 3 minutes 20 seconds…2 minutes 10 seconds…1 minute…_

Root heard the screeching of tires, refusing to look up from her task. Then footsteps, then shouting, and more gunshots.

_Odds of survival…Calculating…50%....45%...39%...42%..._

The Machine continued to chirp the information in Root’s ear, updating the statistics and the approximate locations of Samaritan’s individual assets as they moved closer and what ones were no longer a threat courtesy of their own team. Two clicks of her thumbs and the final charge was primed to go and not a moment too soon. Root looked up and recognized Martine advancing on her, semi-automatic rifle raised. The woman didn’t ever do half measures apparently. Jeremy Lambert and a group of heavily armed operatives now also had John, Shaw, and Fusco pinned down.

_29%...17%...15%..._

There was no more help coming. They were stretched too thin.

Root reached for one of the guns she had set down beside her and two bullets immediately embedded themselves into her body: one in the left arm and the other at the junction where her arm met her shoulder.  The gun dropped back onto the concrete.

_10%...8%...5%..._

A foot connected with the side of her head and Root fell backwards. When she opened her eyes again, the muzzle of the automatic rifle was inches away from her face and Martine was staring down at her through an unemotional hazel gaze that might have once been beautiful in a different life without the murderous intent.

“Didn’t see this coming…should be fun,” Root said, letting out a pained breath.

Root took another breath she fully expected to be her last, but Martine never got the chance to pull the trigger. Another determined body barreled into the tightly wound blonde and they both fell out of Root’s line of sight.

 _Sameen_ , Root thought.  

There was no possible way Shaw should have been able to come to her aid. It had looked like Lambert and his men would have been decorating the marina with their bones by now and yet Root was almost certain it was Shaw who had saved her. She had recognized the strongly coiled body and the fierce grunt as it had collided with Martine’s.

Root grimaced as a terrible burning raced through her shoulder and arm, but she sat up just the same. Martine was flat on her back and Shaw was struggling to remain on top of her, keeping the rifle held down between them so Martine couldn’t lift it to fire. There was a flailing of limbs, a scuffle for dominance that was quickly escalating into a brawl for survival.

Shaw punched Martine and Martine punched her back, then used her legs and threw Sameen off of her, but even airborne Shaw managed to grab a hold of the weapon. Martine reached out then and elbowed Shaw in the temple, flipping them over in swift move that sent the semi-automatic up into the air and over the edge of the pier into the water. The two of them paused for a moment, listening to the deafening splash as their main means of killing one another cancelled itself out of the equation.

“Good, now I get to kill you my way,” Shaw said, a grim sort of satisfaction writhing like a living thing within the absolute determination in her voice.

“Damn you!” Martine seethed.

 “Wouldn’t count on it, bitch.”

Shaw used the distraction to flip their positions and put some space between her and her opponent. In a minute they were both on their feet again, Martine newly armed with a knife from her boot. The blonde lashed out with the fighting knife, but Shaw blocked every attack expertly, keeping up with the Decima operative like the badass that she was. Only when Shaw blocked yet another wild blow and Martine adapted to the attack by tossing the combat knife from one hand to the other did a wave of fear settle inside of Root, cold and heavy.

She should have moved. She should have gone for one of her guns, but it was like she was frozen, watching and seeing everything unable to react in time. It happened quickly and slowly at the same time. Root’s mind took in every calculated movement of every muscle, every minute shift of skin and fabric and the absolute lack of sound as the black steel slid between the ribs of Shaw’s free side lodged up to the hand guard. Sameen flinched with a growl of pain as Martine put pressure on the blade still inside of her, but then she was pushing back.

Even injured, she was a work of art when she moved, lethal and beautiful; strong and vulnerable.

Sameen brought her knee up to connect with Martine’s abdomen twice in quick succession. The moves stunned the blonde enough for her to hunch over and lose her grip on the knife. Shaw stumbled slightly before pulling the knife from her side with a cringe and putting pressure on the wound with her free hand. Root looked at her at the same time as Shaw turned towards her and for a brief moment their eyes locked.

Root stood and started to move towards her, but she was stopped after two steps by a strong arm circling around her waist. She started to struggle against the vice grip, but stopped when she recognized the rough voice next to her ear.

“Root, Finch rigged the charges, we need to get clear before they blow.”

John.

It was John, he had her.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Fusco staggering to help Shaw, but a blonde blur knocked him out of the way before he could reach her.

Martine was on her feet again and instead of reaching for any weapon she took off in a sprint towards Shaw, barreling into her wounded side. Root was aware that she was shouting but she wasn’t even aware of what she was saying. Fusco was somehow standing again and John was reaching for him and starting to retreat as quickly as he could with both of them bundled against the solidness of his tall frame.

Shaw’s dark eyes looked up one last time before she and Martine disappeared over the side of the pier and everything went up in a shock wave of flames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC...


	2. ii. rebirth

_“You’re beautiful—,” Root murmured, whatever else she was going to say was cut off by the hard pressure of Shaw’s lips against hers._

_They kissed heatedly until Root forgot what she’d even wanted to say in the first place. A deep moan came from someplace between them, but neither one of them cared to know from whom. When they finally broke apart for air, Sameen leaned their foreheads together._

_“No talking,” Sameen breathed, “it complicates things.”_

_Every inch of their bodies were touching and they were so close that they were nearly exhaling and inhaling into one another’s mouths. It was incredibly intimate and nothing Sameen would have ever thought herself capable of with anyone else except maybe in another lifetime, but for Root she apparently made exceptions._

_“How can I refuse when you ask so nicely,” Root intoned, watching the fire rise in Shaw’s dark eyes._

_The only light in the apartment was that of the street lights flooding in through the windows of Shaw’s loft. It wasn’t a lot, but the artificial glow was enough to distinguish the mischievous smirk on the hacker’s face._

_Shaw rose to the challenge. It took two seconds and she had both of Root’s hands pinned on the pillow above their heads._

_“I said ‘no talking’,” Shaw repeated, emphasizing that she was in charge by moving her mouth to Roots neck and leaving hot, opened mouthed kisses from the base of her ear to her collarbone…_

Consciousness came to Shaw slowly, then the overflow from every one of her senses rammed through her like a high speed train.

Everything hurt.

Sameen’s eyes felt uncomfortably dry from the minute they opened and it was hard to focus on anything with the brightness of the adjustable light hanging over the examination table she was laying on.

Where was she? _Who_ was she?

There were voices all around her, none of which she recognized. She tried to listen to the words that were being said, but a persistent metallic ringing in her ears and a sharp pain above her eyes made it almost impossible to pay attention to her surroundings. While she was waiting for her senses to acclimate to consciousness, Shaw took a deep settling breath and began a mental assessment of her own well-being.

Pain was a pretty good indication that something was wrong somewhere. There was a sharp pain behind her eyes that resembled how it might feel to wake up the next day after attempting to drink yourself into an early grave and not quite succeeding. That coupled with the tenderness she felt in the muscles around the base of her skull and the damaged tissues at the side of her head that were no doubt inflamed, were enough for Shaw to deduce that she had a head injury. Traumatic at worst, mild at best.

Cautiously, she wiggled her fingers and toes and was pleased when every mental command she sent to her extremities was executed just as she had intended.

A dull throbbing sprung up immediately in her side accompanied by a steady burning sensation. Sameen tried to move her hand towards the area with the highest concentration of discomfort to see what the extent of the damage was, but her reach was pulled up short by a leather cuff that was strapped around her wrist, one holding each arm down against the bed with little room for argument.

The voices buzzing around her suddenly stopped and the examination light was moved out of Sameen’s eyes.

A nervous looking man hovered at the side of the bed. He was bald and out of shape and proof of his anxiety shined on his hairless forehead beneath the oppressive lighting. At the foot of the bed stood a blonde woman of about average height regarding Shaw coolly with her arms crossed over her chest. Her expression was drawn and emotionless and there was a deep gash on her right cheek that had already scabbed over. Strapped to the blonde’s hip was a Sphinx AT 2000 pistol.

Whoever these people were, this woman was the muscle and Shaw had a feeling that she wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in her if she made one wrong move.

Sameen tried to get up from the bed again even though she knew it was futile.

“Such a waste of energy, my dear,” a deep, smooth voice piped up from another part of the room. “Energy that could be better directed elsewhere.”

The blonde woman’s mouth twitched up slightly as the figure of another man materialized beside her. Unlike the first unfortunate specimen—whom Sameen was inclined to think was a doctor given his off white coat and scrubs—this man was in a well cut suit. He was old, old enough to be Sameen’s grandfather almost and the lines of age on his face were more pronounced by the Cheshire grin he was wearing. When he spoke his voice was a heavy grumble of a British accent that would have set Sameen on edge whether she had woken up strapped to a hospital bed or not.

“Despite our last altercation,” he continued, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his suit pants as if he were speaking to a trusted colleague and not a woman who didn’t know who the hell he was. “I believe we can help one another, you and I. You give us valuable information we can use against your former associates and we are prepared to allow you to live out your days in a cell beneath this facility. An honorable end for a respected opponent, wouldn’t you say? As I see it, this is your only option for survival and you strike me as a pragmatic survivalist of a woman much like our dear, Martine, here.”

The blonde woman in question didn’t so much as blink at the honorable mention but kept her unfeeling gaze glued on Shaw.

“So what is it going to be, Ms. Shaw? Survival or blessed oblivion?”

_Ms. Shaw? Is that…me? They want to kill me?_

She started fighting against her restraints anew. She was so done playing this cryptic game. Whoever these people were or whoever they thought she was, it all needed to stop right now. This was like a nightmare—her life at that moment—resembled something that no one deserved to suffer through.

“Who the hell are you people?!” Shaw ground out finally, frustrated that she wasn’t able to get out of her bonds. “And where the fuck am I?”

Her entire body was burning now from the renewed tension in her muscles and the stress the situation was putting on her wounds. The blonde woman blinked, showing some sort of reaction finally, and shared a bemused glance with her boss. Quicker than Shaw would have liked, the blonde woman was moving forward and grasping Sameen’s shoulders so hard that there were sure to be bruises where her fingers dug into the skin later. Savagely, Martine shook Shaw and then pinned her back down to the table so she could barely move.

“Is this a trick?” The blonde asked in a hollow monotone of a voice as if expecting an answer, “State your full name.”

“I don’t fucking know who I am, who the fuck are you?! Get the fuck off me!” Sameen spat, her dark eyes narrowing in indignation as she rose to meet the challenge in the other woman’s eyes.

Martine let go of Shaw’s shoulders then and moved back over to the man Sameen assumed was her boss. The nervous doctor and another man she hadn’t noticed before who was dressed all in black, grasped Sameen’s upper arms and held her down to the bed.

“Is she telling the truth?” The old man asked.

“She believes she is,” Martine replied.

“I fear we’ve underestimated the audacity of circumstance, my dear.” The old man said to the blonde, then he turned towards the men holding Sameen down, “Dr. Fabian, our patient looks tired. Administer a sedative if you please while we decide the best way to handle this new development.”

“No, don’t—” Sameen started, but the rest of the words never made it out as a needle was jabbed into her shoulder and the entire room began to spin and blur around the edges.

 

O8O8O8O8O

 

The second time Sameen came to, she wasn’t in a room with too bright lights, strapped to an industrial hospital bed, but sitting upright in a chair in a concrete room, with her arms, legs, and chest held fast by thick Velcro bands. Her wrists had the extra precaution of being zip-tied to the ends of the armrests. Sameen looked up and the figure of a man seated across a steel table from her came into vivid focus.

He was younger than the old British man she remembered from the hospital room, but just as dapperly dressed. His wavy hair was a short dark brown and his eyes, which were the same shade, shone with a devil may care attitude that Sameen found herself immediately respecting even given her circumstances.

“You people are really into bondage, huh?” Sameen said with a confidence that sprang up from someplace deep inside of her, someplace that felt natural yet closed off from the rest of the world. “Don’t you know a girl likes to be wined and dined first, not whatever the hell this is.”

“I hope you’ll forgive us for the crude confines, but you have quite the reputation for perpetuating ruthlessly effective acts of unfettered violence,” the young man replied with a smile, his British accented voice somehow richer, more rounded, a London accent. Surrey originally perhaps, smoothed out by an adolescent education spent at a posh school like Eton. “We thought it mutually beneficial to keep you restrained until we’ve had a chance to sit down and have a proper chat.”

Sameen tested the Velcro holding her to the chair and found it to be even tighter than the leather straps she’d woken up with the first time.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mr. Lambert but you knew me before the accident as Jeremy. Your name is Sameen Shaw, in case you were wondering, and you and I have known one another since you first came to work for us here at Decima Technologies five or so odd years ago.”

“Bullshit,” Sameen growled, not buying what the man was selling. “If I’ve worked with you then why don’t I remember you?”

“I’m afraid there was a bit of an accident…”

Sameen gripped her hands into tight fists around the armrests and listened as the last few years of her life were explained away and somewhere in between the lines of pretty speech, her inhibitions slipped through her fingers and she settled upon the identity of Sameen Shaw, lethal operative for Decima Tech and an all-powerful A.I. called Samaritan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have more of this. Don't know if I will post it though. Probably will if there is enough interest. Just let me know what everyone thinks. :)


	3. iii. a woman alone

_“I love it when you play doctor…”_

_A pair of warm brown eyes leering at her affectionately, the knowing smirk and witty remarks that always seemed to accompany them. The firm press of a hand on her chest or a lean body into her personal space that would make Shaw squirm and goose bumps rise on her bare arms just before they welcomed the owner of the seductive touch that delighted in tormenting her…_

 

She shot up in bed, her body coming to wakefulness covered in a cold sweat, muscles tense, lungs burning.

The same thing happened every night when Sameen Shaw closed her eyes and settled into a fitful sleep. Memories—images, sensations, smells, tastes, and sounds—flashed in a fragmented chiaroscuro against the back of her eyelids. Light and dark danced against faces and forms she had probably once known well before the accident.

Greer’s lapdog, Lambert, had told her that she was helping them track down a particularly dangerous group of terrorists when it had happened. The chase had led them to a marina closed off from the world by Decima for their own private uses. Shaw had apparently managed to corner their targets, but then there had been an explosion of some sort, probably from an IED rigged to one of the platforms, that had knocked her into the water and hard against one of the concrete beams that supported the pier.

Martine had apparently fished her unconscious ass out of the frigid Atlantic, which was something that surprised Shaw the most about the entire story Lambert had fed her because Martine—much like Shaw herself—was not someone who invoked the warm and fuzzy. She was a cold fish and Shaw could never visualize the remote blonde woman caring enough to save any one of their operatives’ lives, not even Greer’s and certainly not hers.

Even Greer’s welcome home measure, a move where he and Martine dragged her to a dungeon like room beneath the main building at Decima Tech to ascertain how much she remembered and to inspire some of the loyalty to Samaritan she had potentially lost, had felt forced and more like some sort of interrogation than trying to reintegrate her with once familiar surroundings or even the debriefing on a mission gone bad.

Even two months after the accident, Sameen didn’t feel quite right about everything that had happened in the immediate aftermath.

Certain things weren’t right. Like Greer’s overly inflated smiles and the way the old man went to great pains so they would seem more genuine than they were, conveyed to Sameen a sense of underlying falseness that was hiding something else beneath it like a layer of bad carpet over old fashioned wooden flooring that was rotting away in darkness. Or the way Lambert seemed to give her space on a mission and at the same time ask overly evasive questions shrouded in humorous euphemisms that were given away by an over emphasis of his posh accent and a knowing twinkle in his eyes.

Then there was the fact that Martine trailed her everywhere Sameen went with a naked vehemence that spoke of massive mistrust despite that fact that Greer had told her that she and Martine went through training in the military together and were old colleagues even before Sameen had become an operative for Decima.

Nothing felt right and Dr. Fabian—one of the medical doctors on call for Decima’s operatives 24/7 and a nervous man—had explained to Sameen while exchanging anxious looks with Lambert that this was likely a residual effect of the damage to her brain inflicted during the explosion. However, Sameen was aware that she also somehow had extensive medical knowledge and, though she knew an adjustment period was necessary for the body and mind while recovering from an injury like the blunt force trauma to the temporal lobe she had received, she also knew her body and how it healed.

 _Ironic_ , Sameen thought, _considering that I can’t seem to remember who I am or how long I’ve even been working in the private sector for these uptight ass-wipes or anything before that_.

It wasn’t something Sameen could explain.

She knew things instinctually. Like she knew that the standard recovery time for an MTBI like hers was anywhere between 6 weeks to 6 months depending on the amount of soft tissue damage and if any of the higher functions of the brain were affected. She also knew how to field-strip an HK USP Compact .45ACP in under a minute and that she could run approximately 1.5 miles in 9 minutes 20 seconds in combat boots and most weather conditions, baring ice or snow.

These things were immutable. There was no doubt in Sameen’s mind that they were true because they were written on her insides like the Marine Corps tattoo on her right forearm.

They were a part of her that no bump on the head could take away from her and for that Sameen was grateful because if it wasn’t for the resounding facts that granted her a sense of self beyond basic identity, she wasn’t sure where she would be right now.

A slight knock came at the door. Decima had been kind enough to direct her to a bedroom in the main building that had “once been in her possession” as Greer had put it and that she might be keen to revisit on the premises instead of finding lodgings in the city. At the same time, it also kept her confined to the main building Decima used for its operations and under the ever watchful eye of John Greer and Martine while she “recovered”.

Sameen threw back the covers and padded to the door, only opening it a crack and recognizing the familiar stony face across from her like a ghost out of a bad dream.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Sameen grumbled.

“You were expecting maybe one of the boys?” Martine said, shouldering the door and Shaw roughly aside as she let herself into the still dark room.

Sameen grudgingly shut the door behind her and the two women stood quietly in the gloom of the room for a couple of minutes or so. Neither one of them enjoyed or perpetuated small talk so the silence was welcome at most decent times of day but not right now.

Shaw let out a frustrated breath, but before she could growl at Martine to either tell her what she wanted or get the hell out, the blonde woman had her pressed against the wall by the door. Martine’s hair was down, which was unusual for her, and Shaw found herself using it as an anchor to give her some modicum of control over the situation as the blonde kissed her with bruising force.

They’d done this three or four times in the past couple of months and yet nothing in how it played out could convince Shaw that it was or ever had been (if it was something that had happened before her accident, she didn’t know) anything more than a simple business transaction between the two of them. Scratch that necessary horn dog itch and get gone. And though the ultimate outcome was often met in every one of Sameen’s encounters with Martine, something felt wrong about it.

About them…together.

The way Martine’s kisses were brutal, almost obtrusive in the way her mouth demanded entry to Shaw’s and when she had it, how her tongue would bully it’s way within and her teeth would always bite down on the places of Shaw’s body that made her try to squirm out of the blonde’s stranglehold. Then there were the features of that body. The full round breasts that Shaw was never allowed to touch, the firm planes of muscle that seemed to always be in straight lines and angles whenever Shaw would run her hands over them, not the soft dips and curves Sameen craved.

Martine groaned into her mouth as Shaw bit her lip hard—a move she knew would get the other woman moving and speed up the process. The blonde pulled back slightly, eyes that were the wrong shade than the ones that haunted Sameen’s dreams staring unemotionally back at her in the dim glow of the outside lights.

“Just like old times,” Martine said, the corners of her mouth almost twitching up into as much of an arrogant smirk as the woman ever allowed herself to wear.

“I wouldn’t know,” Shaw husked, effectively shutting the blonde up by resealing the distance between them as an overly eager hand found its way beneath her waistband.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Root's chapter is up next. You'll get to see her part in this and just why Team Machine hasn't come after Shaw just yet. Thanks for reading. Glad people are enjoying it so far. :)


	4. iv. extraction?

_Root tried to keep the disgusted look from her face, but she couldn’t hide the visible shudder that ran through her body._

_“Let me guess, not a hard liquor person?” Shaw asked before leaning forward and taking the hardball glass with the remaining scotch from the hacker’s loose grasp and knocking back the amber liquid in one impressive swallow._

_“I prefer something a little softer so I can keep my wits about me, well most of the time, but then again you know how I like to be distracted,” Root said, grinning._

_Shaw had only shared a drink with Root one other time and it was when Root had recruited her to go to Anchorage and steal a jet (which was by far one of Sameen’s favorite mission memories) then they had flown said jet to Miami to take out a group of small time criminal arms dealers and Root had made them both fruity drinks then while in the company of scattered bodies both unconscious and in pain._

_That had been a fun ride. They’d bonded more over that mission than anything else they’d done before. It had given Shaw a glimpse of Root in full action, uninhibited by time or Harold’s rules and she had found the resulting mix of efficiency and Root’s elegant free style beautiful to watch play out._

_Sameen scowled at the easy familiarity with which the other woman was able to get under her skin and that just made Root’s grin widen almost as if she knew what Shaw was thinking._

_Then Shaw blinked and suddenly Root had taken up residence in her lap, straddling her and encasing her head and shoulders in her arms so that their faces were now so very close together._

_They kissed for a few minutes, easy yet hungry kisses that seemed to characterize everything that they were together. Tongues intertwined, teeth occasionally clinked together messily until Shaw finally leaned forward to nip at Root’s bottom lip, but the other brunette pulled away tilting her head to one side in a manner that meant she was listening to something the machine was whispering in her ear._

_Shaw leaned back, not even trying to hide her annoyance at being interrupted by their all-seeing, all-powerful boss. Even pissed, Sameen could admire the pick flush of arousal that made Root’s skin glow with energy and like a moth to a flame, she found herself wanting Root more._

Fuck it, _Sameen thought and with the final decision made, she leaned forward again and bit the juncture where Root’s jaw met her neck hard enough to draw blood._

_Root sucked in a sudden, shuddering breath and let it out in a deep-seated moan that filled the quiet of the room between them and made heat pool between Shaw’s thighs as Root’s hands clung to her, fisting in the back of the shirt Shaw was still somehow wearing._

_“Sameen, wait,” Root protested weakly, trying to regain her senses, “She—”_

_“I don’t give a fuck about what the machine wants right now.” Shaw growled, pulling back enough to meet Root’s eyes, “no one owns you, Root. Not Finch and especially not Her.”_

_Sameen leaned forward again, ripping Root’s shirt down the middle and taking a nipple roughly into her mouth._

_Root didn’t protest again after that._

O8O8O8O8O 

“Decima has to have her. If she survived, they wouldn’t have just left her to bleed out on the pier. She would’ve been too valuable a chess piece for them to leave behind. We need to go back for her, Harry,” Root said, heatedly diving back into an argument the three of them had been having over and over again since the explosion of the marina. “Sameen would do the same for any one of us.”

“However much I want to see Ms. Shaw safe and unharmed, it needs to be said that we don’t have the necessary resources human or otherwise for an extraction of this sort at the current moment just as we didn’t two months ago.” Harold stood from his seat in front of his computer monitors inside of the subway car and limped out into the open where Root and John were standing. “May I reiterate that we also don’t even know if she survived the blast, Ms. Groves. Her body was never found. How can we be sure that risking everything to plunge down into the bowels of Decima for a suicide mission would yield the result we are looking for and return Ms. Shaw to us?”

“There’s only one way to find out, Finch.” John said, stepping away from the doorframe of the subway car and straightening his shoulders.

In an uncharacteristic show of warmth, Reese stepped up beside Root and squeezed her shoulder.

He still felt a little guilty for the choice he had been forced to make that day in the marina. It was either save Root and Fusco or try to extract Martine from Shaw and possibly get them all blown to bits in the process and Reese had made the harder call, but at least he was willing to own up to it.

Harold cared for Shaw as much as Reese did, but he was so focused on the proper course of action to take against Samaritan now that the tables had been turned and the playing field levelled between the two gods, that he was loathe to waste their resources on what might prove a futile endeavor that would likely get them all killed in the process.

Root and Reese had been forced to work very closely with one another on missions over the past couple of months due to Sameen’s absence and the two had fallen into a grudging pattern of trust and respect for one another’s abilities.

“I’m with you,” John said, surprising Root. “Do you have a plan?”

“Not yet,” Root conceded, “but She has some ideas.”

O8O8O8O8O

The sights and sounds of the city whirled by as Root walked slowly along the sidewalk, but she paid little if any attention to her surroundings. The machine would alert her if anything life threatening came up.  For not the first time that day, Root berated herself for not following her instincts and barging into Decima, guns blazing to retrieve Sameen in the first place.

The machine hadn’t been able to confirm whether she was alive or dead because the marina had no surveillance at the time of the explosion and any eminent rescue would have gone unobserved by Her, but Root knew that she had to be. Sameen was a fighter. She’d cheated death so many times that she’d once referred to herself as a cat with so many lives still left in reserve and Root fully believed in Shaw’s survival instincts.

 _They better bring their A game, because I’m not that easy to kill,_ Sameen had said on more than one mission and Root had never had any reason to think otherwise where Shaw was concerned.

Root continued blindly turning corners and crossing streets until her feet stopped before a familiar door in a building she now inhabited.

Sameen’s apartment building.

Harold had made her a key after he’d found out that she’d just spent the first month or so casually breaking and entering so now at least, when she wanted to go in, she didn’t have to look around her to make sure no one saw her jimmy the lock. The arrangement felt a little more legit than it was.

Despite spending a little over a year sleeping together, Root had never officially moved in with Shaw. Shaw was someone who really enjoyed her space and Root enjoyed the times when she knew that Shaw was allowing her to be a part of that, acknowledging that Root belonged where she was even if Root didn’t always believe it.

She’d taken up residence in Sameen’s apartment after the marina because when she was there it was easier to convince herself that Shaw was still alive and maybe in the next room inhaling some questionable take out leftovers from the fridge or changing into a new hoodie than it was to realize that she was gone for good. Certain things still smelled like Shaw too.

The sheets, for a time, had retained the familiar fresh zest of Sameen’s shampoo and her wool jacket, which she wore for most of the winter and autumn months that continually smelled of gun powder no matter how many times Shaw had taken it to get dry cleaned. At first, those things had been an almost painful reminder that Sameen wasn’t with her.

Root remembered the first few weeks after the operation at the marina as a blur of numbness, tears, and arguments with the boys as well as briefly being confined to the subway station by them after throwing a loose light fixture at Harold in frustration and incapacitating one of his computer monitors in the process.

She’d thought for a few days that they were going to keep her locked up indefinitely, but with Shaw out of commission, Harold and Reese were too short handed to watch over her all of the time like some unruly child so she had been released for good behavior and to help with the numbers. Even once she was free again, Root noticed something missing at the core of her who she was.

There was a void where once there had been this wonderful solidarity of being. She no longer met danger head first with a confident, seductive air, but with a strained indifference that found her throwing herself into every conflict so that the fight would come to an end just that much quicker. There was no vim, no vigor, no sign of the fire that had once burned inside of her and let her know that she was alive. On some of her better days there was this unrestrained anger that seemed to color everything she saw and Root found it difficult during those times not to give into her sudden urge to burn the world down because Sameen was no longer in hers anymore. 

She was like a vengeful ghost, a ghastly specter careening ahead with two fully loaded handguns. On most days, Root wasn’t even sure if she’d care if she killed someone by accident, be it one of the perps going after their numbers or one of the victims, she was that fucked up by Shaw’s absence, so lost that she’d stopped caring entirely about the people she was supposed to protect.

 _She’d be disappointed in me if she could see me now_ , was all Root could think as she climbed the familiar steps and let herself into Sameen’s apartment. The audacity of the overly furnished living room of Sameen’s last cover identity was particularly grating upon Root as she turned on the lights.

She’d used to tease Sameen that having an apartment that actually resembled other people’s might be an important step on the road to becoming a well-adjusted member of society, but tonight the very sight of the Ethan Allen post-modern furniture pieces made Root want to vomit.

She tossed her keys into an empty gun case sitting on the end table by the front door that the handgun Sameen had taken to the marina used to be kept in and continued in a tired haze towards the bedroom.

She didn’t even bother to turn on the lights when she got there, preferring the illusion always that Sameen might be waiting in the bed for her and that the past couple of months may have been just one really bad pipe dream, but the sheets were cool to her touch when she slid beneath the covers and as Root drifted in and out of sleep, she was aware that they never really did warm up at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raised the rating to M for this one. Didn't know if it was necessary, but just to be on the safe side. Hope everyone enjoyed it and thank you for reading. If you've made it this far you deserve a medal. ;)


	5. v. a little risk

“They’ll be expecting us,” John commented as he ducked beneath the open slant in the chain-link fence Root had cut and was holding up so that they could both slip through.

“Security will no doubt be double if not triple what it used to be,” chirped a familiar voice in both of their earpieces. “Proceed with extreme caution, Ms. Groves.”

“Good to hear from you, Harry.” Root smiled, pleased that Harold had let go of his inhibitions and was onboard enough with their hair-brained extraction plan to finally help them.

When she and John had left the subway station, he hadn’t been on speaking terms with them.

He’d been so angry and worried for their safety and frustrated in himself for not being able to convince them against their death wish to rush into the clutches of Decima, but apparently he’d gotten over that rather quickly and Root was grateful for not the first time for Harold’s natural ability to compartmentalize.

John raised a pair of night vision binoculars up to his eyes.

“I count fifteen guards on this side,” He said. “We can go in under the radar, but it won’t be long before one of them raises the alarm.”

“Greer must be feeling vulnerable,” Harold observed.

“Getting Sameen back is the only thing that matters,” Root reminded them both, clicking the safety off on her weapons. “We get in, get her, and get out.”

Root felt John flinch beside her and looked up to see him peering into his binoculars again.

“Root,” he said, deep brooding voice somewhat unsure. “You need to see this.”

Root took the binoculars and looked through them, directing them where he was pointing. She honed in on one of the magnified green-cast images and almost dropped the binoculars when she recognized who it was.

“Is that—” Root started, but couldn’t get the rest of the words past the tightness in her throat.

“Harold,” John said into his earpiece. “It appears this is less of a hostage situation than we thought it was going to be.”

“What makes you say that, Mr. Reese?”

“Because we found Shaw and it looks like she’s switched sides. She’s working for Decima now.”

 

O8O8O8O8O 

 

The night had been quiet so far.

Sameen had been patrolling the perimeter around the main building and just like every other evening, she hadn’t found anything interesting, just too many agents so green around the ears she was worried one of them might shoot her instead of an actual intruder.

Apparently, Decima was at war.

Samaritan, Decima’s main project meant to bring order and peace to the wider world, was in danger from a homegrown extremist group based somewhere in New York City that was hell bent on destroying Samaritan and everything that it stood for.

When Sameen had volunteered to hunt down and exterminate the members of this small terrorist cell whom had apparently created their own A.I. to copy Samaritan, Greer had immediately shot her down and Sameen suspected that it was due in part because he wanted to keep her close for some reason.

Maybe it was because he still didn’t trust her to go out on her own so soon again after the failed operation at the marina or perhaps it was because he preferred to remain on the defensive for the time being, Sameen didn’t know, but whatever his reasons, Sameen’s considerable talents were being under used and she was bored out of her mind with regular guard duty.

She double checked the safety on her Beretta PX4 for the second time in five minutes and walked on. Then Sameen rounded a corner and stopped, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.

_About damn time._

Her reaction was automatic—like a well-oiled machine with all of the gears clicking into place—the tension in her muscles uncoiled as she drew the pistol from her hip holster and continued on, stepping more lightly. The adrenaline rose quickly in her veins. It had been too long since Sameen Shaw had had an enemy she could beat into a satisfyingly bloody pulp and she was ready for some action.  She rounded the corner of the building, the uneasy feeling that she wasn’t alone growing stronger with every step forward she took.

Suddenly, she saw a flash of movement in the darkness and raced forward, tackling the unwilling body to the ground.

O8O8O8O8O

Root fell backwards, feeling her body being thrown harshly down into the concrete by a bony shoulder crashing into her hip. She hit the ground hard, the full weight of another body pinning her down. Strong arms wrapped around her wrists and held them firmly in place. Root struggled against the hold contemplating head butting her captor, but her entire train of thought stopped the moment she opened her eyes and saw _whom_ it was that had her.

“Sameen?” the woman breathed, almost as if she couldn’t believe they were both face to face after so long apart. “You’re really alive.”

Shaw blinked. They lay prostrate for a moment, the two of them, just staring into one another’s eyes. Everything about the woman beneath Sameen felt familiar somehow. The way their bodies seemed to fit together as if their muscles remembered a time when it was a nightly occurrence, the feel of the soft skin of the woman’s cheek against Shaw’s knuckles and the wispiness of her hair that felt like the threads on a beloved fraying blanket.

Lastly were those eyes. Those damn light brown eyes the shade of hardened caramel or honey always with a mischievous glint in their depths except the earnest vulnerability they held when the body beneath them was coming undone, baring the soul they shielded naked for Sameen’s scrutiny. She tried to blink the flashes of memory away, but they continued unbidden for a moment behind her eyes, leaving Sameen with more questions than answers.

_Who are you and why do I feel like I know you?_

Sameen wanted to ask, wanted to say the words, but the tears beginning to well up in the other woman’s eyes stopped her—eyes the same color as the ones in Sameen’s dreams. The brunette beneath her was smiling like a fool now and crying tears of joy, maybe?

Two hands suddenly grasped the sides of Sameen’s face and Root brought her lips crashing into Shaw’s. Sameen startled at first then gave in and kissed the other woman back fiercely.

Everything about the kiss felt…real.

The way their mouths gave and took from one another in a familiar rhythm and how at home her body felt cradled against the soft dips and curves of the one beneath her, mystified Shaw. She couldn’t understand how it was that one person could be so entirely enveloped by another and how natural that could feel relying on someone else for that feeling of completeness.  

Shaw heard footsteps quickly rounding the corner and she immediately angled her body to shield the woman beneath her from the danger as their lips parted. Her hand went for her gun, but before she could raise it, the other brunette gripped her wrist lightly. They both looked up then as John Reese rounded the corner, a sleek Browning Double Action held up to his chin. He lowered his weapon immediately though when he recognized Shaw and an easy smirk turned up the corners of his mouth.

“I knew you were too stubborn to die, Shaw,” he said in his usual easy way, stepping lightly over towards them like they were old friends and extending his hand to help them up.

Sameen took one look at that hand, grabbed it and used the big lumox’s overextended position to knock him off balance to the ground and roll him over, pinning him to his stomach with his gun hand behind his back. The strange pull that the taller brunette seemed to have over her, had unsettled Shaw, but the arrival of this trusting stranger dressed in a well-cut suit and definitely not Decima who clearly recognized her was the last straw.

Shaw wasn’t one to fold under emotional pressure. It was almost as if that same switch that existed in other people, that switch that told them when to cry and when to be happy and when to run, didn’t exist within her and that allowed her to still be at her most lethal even when she felt her most vulnerable.

“Shaw—” the man grunted against the concrete, almost seeming surprised that she had turned on him. “Root what’s wrong with her? Ouch, Jesus!”  

“Quiet,” Shaw barked in his ear, twisting his wrist tighter against his back and using her free hand to tuck his discarded Browning pistol into the waistband of her fatigues.

The other woman was sitting up now and Sameen avoided looking at her, at the only person she had encountered so far who had managed to make her feel something, anything remotely _real_ because she knew if she did, it would cause the carefully crafted version of herself that she’d come to know and rely upon these past two months come crashing down.

“Sameen, Sameen stop,” Root pleaded.

She had moved over towards the struggling duo and her hand was resting on the shoulder of the arm Sameen was using to torture John. Cold fear settled on her chest like a weight. Root hadn’t noticed that anything was wrong with Shaw, really, aside from the fact that she was dressed in a Decima technologies guard uniform and seemed to be working for them now. Physically, though, Sameen had seemed fine.

To be honest she’d been too happy to see Sameen alive and well and the fact that she had responded so readily to Root’s kiss had made Root think that everything was going to be okay, that the Shaw they knew was still in there somewhere, but she wasn’t.

Clearly, it was wishful thinking on Root’s part and clearly she needed to reevaluate the situation before someone got hurt, but Root wasn’t sure she had the strength right now to turn on Sameen even so they could just knock her out and get her back to the subway station. She was too emotionally compromised. She couldn’t bring herself to hurt Shaw—they’d just found her.  

She honestly didn’t know what was wrong with Shaw, but something was and they didn’t have time to deal with it just now. They needed to convince Shaw to come with them. Already, the machine was informing her that their scuffle had been heard and there were other Decima agents on the way to back Shaw up. If they didn’t hurry none of them would get out of this place alive, including Shaw.

Sameen stilled at all too familiar touch on her shoulder, the touch of a lover who knew her body and how it reacted, but her grip on John’s wrist didn’t lessen.

“How do you know my name? Answer me or I break his arm.” Sameen ordered, eying Root for the first time indifferently.

Root tried to repress the shudder at the complete lack of emotion directed at her in Shaw’s gaze because she knew that reaction, she knew that when Shaw was really afraid she repressed it and allowed something easier like rage or indifference to take its place. Taking a deep breath, Root forced herself to keep eye contact with Shaw’s hard gaze and squeezed the woman’s shoulder reassuringly.

“Because you’re one of us,” Root said.

“No,” Shaw immediately denied.

“Yes, Sameen listen to me,” Root continued, unfazed by the vehemence in Shaw’s voice. “Decima, they took you from us and forced you into this. Don’t you remember fighting these goons for the past year? Don’t you remember the marina?”

Sameen closed her eyes. Her head was pounding and those pesky images were flashing against the back of her eyes again. There was fire and heat and water and it was hard to breathe and the smell of gun powder and the smug look on a familiar blonde’s face as she sunk the raw edge of a KA-BAR combat knife between Shaw's lower ribs...

“Sameen!”

The sound of her first name jolted Shaw out of her thoughts. She found herself sitting up now on the cold concrete. The man she had been pinning down had dislodged her and was standing up again, staring at her strangely. The taller brunette was squatting across from her and both her hands were holding Shaw at arm’s length by the shoulders as if she’d had to shake Sameen out of her stupor.  

“Sameen, look at me, you need to come with us. We can help you.”

Shaw blinked, her conflicted expression making her look more lost than Root had ever seen her in all the time they’d known one another.

“Root,” John warned, stepping slightly back into the shadows. “We’ve got company.”

Root heard them then: footsteps, pounding the concrete fast and getting closer with every moment they sat there.

“I—I don’t know either of you,” Sameen protested weakly, Root’s chest tightening at the broken tone, so faint it was almost a whisper, so unlike Shaw.

Root moved her hands to either side of Shaw’s face, causing the other woman to look up from the ground and into her eyes and forcing her to see the absolute sincerity there.

 _Please_ , Root thought desperately, _Please let her remember me._

“Whoever you think you are, I know you, Sameen Shaw, and I love you.”

Sameen just started at her blankly. She wanted so much to believe what this woman was saying, especially the last part (because honestly who didn’t want to be loved by someone else?), but Sameen didn’t even know her name and couldn’t remember if she’d ever known it.

However, she knew this woman’s face, her eyes, and her body from dreams that had woken her almost every night since she could remember and all of that couldn’t have just been for nothing could it? Just a cruel trick of her mind? No, it had to be real. It _felt_ real.

“I’ll explain everything to you later, just please come with us,” Root pleaded, an increasing volume of static burning a warning in her ear.

“Root,” John said again, the growing urgency in his voice unmistakable. He raised his reclaimed Browning and fired a couple of shots at a dark clad body rounding the corner of the building. “We need to go. Now.”  

Root grasped Sameen’s forearm and tugged and Shaw stood at the unspoken command, surprising herself. Blind faith had never been a part of who she was to her knowledge and it scared her a bit now to feel it running like a sedative through her veins so heavy and insistent on directing her actions.

The taller brunette’s grip moved from her arm to the collar of her jacket, pushing and pulling and suddenly Shaw was moving backwards watching as the other woman put herself between Sameen and the advancing Decima agents, raised a handgun and fired two perfectly aimed shots into the chests of two of the guards.

A couple more agents came around the corner shooting, but the man in the suit shot their legs out from beneath them with two well-placed rounds and they were moving again back in the direction of the perimeter, the brunette pushing Shaw ahead of her and the man who’s wrist she was glad she hadn’t actually broken, covering their retreat.

“I’ve got her, Harry,” Root said, seeing the rough slit in the fence she’d made coming into focus as they got closer.

The gunshots rang out behind them with alarming, but unsurprising frequency. John was covering them and for once Root was glad Shaw had allowed herself to be manhandled. It wasn’t like her, but then nothing about this situation and how she’d reacted was like the Shaw Root knew. There was a rough yelp behind them and Root suddenly stopped. Reese was kneeling on the ground, his gun hand still raised while his other hand was holding his calf.

“Root, what’s happening?” Harold asked in her ear.  

“John’s been shot.”

Root turned towards Shaw and let go of her jacket.

“Stay here,” she said, trying not to think about how much she didn’t want to let go of Sameen for fear that she may never see her again.

Then Root liberated the other gun from the waistband of her jeans and suddenly she was firing anywhere the machine directed. Decima agents began falling with steady regularity again, but the more she cut down it seemed the more would appear to take their places. Root continued taking them out and knelt down beside John.

“Put your arm around me,” she ordered.

Reese raised his left arm and Root felt it settle heavily around her shoulders. She tucked one gun back into the front of her pants and reached for his hand, ignoring the nausea that rolled through her stomach at the wet, sticky feel of it. Slower than either of them would have liked, they both managed to get to their feet, Reese shooting back with the Browning in his free hand.

Root wasn’t exactly sure how they were going to manage to get their unwieldy hodgepodge of limbs back to their hole in the fence, but she was willing to bet they could make it most of the way if one or both of them just continued shooting and backed the rest of the way slowly.

 Luck, though, wasn’t on their side.

Amidst the groups of Decima agents making their way towards them, Root spotted two very familiar and unwelcome faces: Jeremy Lambert and Martine Rousseau. Samaritan apparently saw them as enough of threat still—even as outnumbered as they were—to send its top assets against them.

“Root,” John said, trying to put weight on his injured leg so that they could back up a little faster and not succeeding. “We need to go.”

“I know,” she said, grunting with the exertion of shouldering part of Reese’s weight and shooting people at the same time.

John fired a few shots, one hit Lambert in the shoulder and he was knocked off of his feet.

Martine adjusted her stance and fired back, one of her bullets embedding itself in Root’s gun arm. She reeled from the recoil and the two of them almost fell over together in a disheveled heap, but Root somehow managed to mostly keep her balance. John wasn’t so lucky, however. He toppled over from the pain in his leg like an unstable janga tower, taking Root down with him.

She looked again up from the ground through a haze of pain and noticed that the flood of Decima agents had stopped. Most were laying in bleeding, moaning heaps around them, but Martine was there and she had moved. Instead of the few feet that had separated them before, only a few inches now separated Root’s face from the muzzle of Martine’s Sphinx pistol. She heard the deafening sound of the hammer being cocked back and closed her eyes against what she knew was coming.

 Luck definitely wasn’t on their side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I was wrong, there will be more chapters after this one. I apologize for the cliff hanger, but I promise more is coming soon! Thanks for reading. :)


	6. vi. waiting between worlds

Root refused to open her eyes. She didn’t need the machine to tell her what was about to happen.

She’d spent that last thirty-five years out running death and had gotten pretty good at it. Even as a child, she’d gotten herself out of some pretty shady situations and managed to live long enough to run so far away from her place of birth that she was hoping she’d left her past behind her. It was amazing, Root mused as she looked back on her life: memories brief and vivid blazing like a living fire in her mind’s eye.

Her mother sitting fully clothed in their bathtub in the rundown house they’d shared in Bishop, wrists cut open and bleeding as she had wept that last time before she’d been committed to a mental hospital by the authorities, that one time in fourth grade when three boys had cornered Sam Groves on the walk home from school and beaten her black and blue with sticks just to see if the weird girl who didn’t talk to anyone could still bleed red, and the stash of empty whiskey bottles her father had kept beneath the passenger seat of his 1979 Ford Courier, growing exponentially every day she could remember until the morning he’d finally driven away and left them for good.

She remembered Hanna’s smile and how it had always felt like a sun Sam had been drawn to whenever its warmth had been directed at her and the fear that had settled into her stomach the last time she’d seen that same smile directed at Mr. Russell when he’d offered Hanna a ride in his car the last night Root or anyone had seen her alive.

Or the scared look on Cyrus’s face while she’d made her way to him across an expanse of gunfire and the trust shining in his eyes afterwards that Root knew she hadn’t deserved because she’d murdered his friends and would have murdered him too without a thought back then if she’d been paid to target him specifically. Then being taught to care for people by the machine and feeling guilt settle in her gut as the result of that ability to care about victims like Cyrus and what she’d done to them.

Remembering kidnapping Sameen Shaw for their first mission together and finding a kindred spirit in her that Root had not expected to ever find in another person, someone who enjoyed the mayhem and the violence just as much as she did but also adhered to a strict moral code that served the greater good.  Such a delicate interweaving of the need for destruction and the equally important need to protect had intrigued Root and allowed her to believe that she could change the trajectory of her moral compass.

Whether such a thing was possible or not, Root didn’t know, but just Sameen simply _being_ who she was had allowed Root to become different and that was something the hacker would always be secretly indebted to the other woman for, for the rest of her days or in light of her current circumstances…until now.

She also remembered loving Shaw—the brusque demeanor that seemed to melt a little whenever they kissed, the feel of Sameen’s skin, scarred in many places, soft in others, and the immutable vulnerability that would rise in her eyes when she would give into the pleasure Root was giving her. Finally, that last thing Root saw was the wounded, sweaty, but determined expression on Shaw’s face as she’d been knocked almost in slow motion by Martine’s body off of the pier and finally out of sight before everything had gone up in flames…

There was an abrupt whoosh of air that left a vacuum of stillness behind and then a dull thud that brought Root out of her reverie. She opened her eyes and was met with nothing but the blackness of the night. The gun and the threatening blonde wielding it were gone.

Root struggled to get up, looking from side to side and grasping desperately for the gun the blond had dropped as she caught sight of Martine on the ground and Sameen struggling to hold her there. Shaw must have tackled the Samaritan operative to the ground and in the process, the gun had slid twenty feet across the pavement, far enough that Root wouldn’t be able to get to it without getting to her feet. 

The two operatives grappled for a few minutes, both trying to get the upper hand on the other. They rolled over, Martine using her thighs to pin her weight on top of Shaw’s chest and shoulders.

“Wondered when you would start to remember it all,” Martine grunted, when Shaw tried unsuccessfully to throw her and regain some modicum of control. “The deception was fun while it lasted, though. Now I get to kill you my way.”

Sameen used Martine’s momentary loss of focus against her, landing a hard right hook across the blonde’s jaw. She wasn’t going to die today.

Using the newfound space she’d created, Sameen grabbed onto Martine’s arm and brought her right leg up, encircling the blonde’s neck and shoulders within the tight stranglehold of her limbs. Finally, she locked her hands behind the blonde’s head and pulled, putting the necessary pressure on the carotid arteries. It would only take seconds in that hold and the blonde would lose consciousness, but Martine wasn’t so easily beaten. She used the arms she’d managed to keep free and grabbed the base of Shaw’s skull and yanked it forward, causing Sameen to let go or risk having her neck broken at an odd angle.

As soon as Martine was free again, she elbowed Shaw in the solar plexus hard and spun away. Shaw tried to get up, but even trying to take a breath hurt after a strike like that. She managed to get to her knees and stumbled to her feet. A forearm closed in around her throat and pulled back. Sameen stumbled again stiffly and froze as a sharp pain burned in her lower back. She felt hot all of the sudden and shaky.

Summoning her remaining strength, Sameen elbowed Martine in the stomach twice and used the now loosened arm around her neck to toss the blonde over her shoulder. The exertion of the move made Sameen suddenly dizzy and she sank to her knees. The red stained KA-BAR knife that Martine had used to stab Shaw in the back fell out of her grip and clattered onto the concrete.

They were both unarmed now and Sameen was injured.

Not exactly the most desirable of circumstances. Quickly, Shaw guessed at the percentages of her chances of survival and just as quickly disregarded the results. She hadn’t lived this long, hadn’t survived this many close calls by admitting defeat before the defeat was definite. That was a sure fire way to lose and no one was dying today, Sameen would make sure of that, except maybe the blonde bitch who’d literally stabbed her in the back after two months pretending to be “friends”.

She was most definitely going down as soon as Shaw got back to her feet. She tried to stand, but sunk back down again as a strong wave of nausea washed through her.

Kidneys. She’d been stabbed in the kidneys. That fucking bitch.

Martine recovered quickly, rolling and reclaiming the KA-BAR. Shaw noticed her opponent move out of her peripheral line of vision, forced herself to stand despite all the signals her body was giving her to stay down, and raised her forearm in time to block an overhead strike.

Everything else fell into place automatically, her muscles and mind knowing what to do before she had to think about it. Shaw grabbed the blonde’s open hand at the wrist in a tight grip and twisted painfully, eliciting an undignified yelp from Martine and allowing Sameen to use her unoccupied hand to crush the blonde’s ear in another fist and pull with excruciating force, directing the unwilling body back down to the pavement beneath her.

She heard the clang of metal as the knife once again dropped from Martine’s fingers. Shaw maintained her grip on Martine’s wrist even as they slid to the concrete and released her ear, using her now free hand to deliver a swift open palmed strike to the blonde’s throat.

“And that is why you should always keep your chin down,” Sameen goaded, reveling in the pain burning in the blonde’s eyes.  

Shaw was losing precious energy by the second in a life threatening situation, but she didn’t care. This rare moment of one upping one of the people who had spent every waking moment manipulating her was worth savoring even if it was unwise to do so for too long.

Root was on her feet again. The adrenaline rush had given her the strength and now that she was up, she couldn’t stop moving.

She claimed Martine’s Sphinx pistol, sure it would come in handy when more reinforcements were called in. Samaritan had cameras on the perimeter and the Machine was reminding her that Samaritan could see everything She could see (as if Root didn’t know that already). She reached down and grabbed John under his shoulders with both arms, trying to heft him up. He was semi-conscious, but losing blood from the wound in his leg fast.

“Harold, you might want to send assistance if you can,” Root said, grimacing even as John started to take more of his weight off from her.

“Already on it. Mr. Fusco is on his way.”

“We just have to survive until he gets here,” John gritted out, the pain in his leg bringing him back to more or less complete consciousness as he stood with his arm around Root.

“Shaw!” Root shouted, drawing the woman’s attention.

Martine was still having trouble breathing when Sameen punched her hard across the temple, effectively knocking her out and then punching the blonde again just because she wanted to. Then Shaw rose and rushed over towards the woman who’d called her name. She still didn’t remember who the brunette was (Root the man in the suit, John, had called her?), but they obviously meant a lot to one another and she was going to get some answers before even more guards showed up and sent them all to hell in a hand basket. Just then Root looked at her and their eyes met and Sameen knew her thirst for answers would have to wait.

Sameen pulled one of John’s arms around her neck, sharing his weight despite the wound burning in her back.

“Here, lean on me,” she said.  

Between the three of them, they managed to scramble back to the perimeter where Lionel was waiting on the street with a getaway car, doing their best to ignore the residual shouting and the occasional gunshots directed at their backs.

 

O8O8O8O8O

 

It amazed Sameen, almost, how few questions she had asked on the drive into Manhattan.

Allowing people to blindly direct her actions wasn’t like the person she’d known herself to be these past two months and that feeling of unease warred with the uncertainty in her gut as the car pulled up to a curb alongside a string of apparently abandoned buildings.  

“Where are we?” Sameen asked as Root got out of the front and Fusco moved around to help John out of the backseat where they had stuffed him.

“Home,” Root said simply.

She couldn’t look at Shaw. Not yet, not until they were safe again because if she did she was pretty sure she was going to lose track of her surroundings completely and then she wouldn’t be able to protect Sameen if one of Decima’s goons jumped out of the wood work and Root wasn’t going to lose her again. She’d just gotten her back.

Shaw must have understood somehow that Root wasn’t going to give her anymore of an explanation at the moment because she followed the brunette and Fusco and John down the dim stairway that led to a deserted foyer with a fake candy machine that popped out of the wall and led to another well-lit stairway without a word.

What emerged from there was something that looked like a vintage train station that hadn’t been used in years. However, Shaw noticed a few modern discrepancies right away. There were eco-friendly low wattage bulbs in all of the ancient lighting fixtures on the walls, the sort that had only just come into popularity in the last six years or so and there were lines of Ethernet and HDMI cables held together with multiple twist ties running from the far wall all the way down to the unused subway platform where a stationary car sat open.

As subtly as she could manage, Sameen hugged the nearest wall. She was still losing blood from the stab wound that burned like a thousand hot coals in her lower back and she was beginning to feel unsteady on her feet now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

“Ms. Shaw! I am inordinately happy to see you,” an overjoyed male voice said from somewhere nearby.

Shaw looked up and noticed a strange looking man with librarian-like glasses and an impeccably tailored three piece suit hobbling towards her wearing a brilliant smile. He stopped beside Root who was standing several feet ahead of her and now staring at her as well with an unreadable expression on her face.

The man named Lionel led John over to a bench by the subway car and began elevating his injured leg, Shaw noticed out of the corner of her eyes. The blank look on her face must have raised some red flags because the ferret like man in the glasses had lost his overjoyed grin and was looking at her with wide eyes transparent in their confusion.

“Sameen, this is Harold. He’s the boss, well…one of them anyway,” Root said, an element of her old smirk twisting up the corners of her mouth, but something about the action still seemed hollow. “And you two used to be good friends.”

Harold looked between the two women, his expression once again shifting from one of confusion to one of horror.

“Ms. Groves what’s going on?”

Root looked at Sameen, noticed the impatience and irritation warring for the right to take control of the woman first and bit her lip uncertainly.  

  _I don’t know_ , the hacker wanted to say, but she couldn’t find the strength to summon the words and admit it to Harold let alone to herself.

Honestly, she didn’t know. Whether Sameen’s injuries from the accident had caused her memory loss or some sort of torture at the hands of Samaritan’s operatives had, Root wasn’t sure and up until this point she had been happy enough to have Shaw back at her side that she’d been trying her hardest not to think about any of it. To just pretend on the car ride back that everything was the same and that everything was going to be okay now that she had Sameen back in her life, but the hard truth was that Root didn’t know anything for sure anymore.

Root took a deep breath and released it slowly before stepping forward so that she and Shaw were only inches apart and raised her hand to brush a stray strand of dark hair from Sameen’s cheek. Shaw swallowed but didn’t say anything, surprising herself with how complacent she was in this woman’s presence.

She didn’t like to be touched unless it was on her terms, but ever since she’d tackled the tall brunette to the ground, Root had been able to worm her way in close to Shaw, crawling beneath all of her careful crafted defenses unafraid of what she would find when she actually reached the real woman inside the barrier. And Shaw already found it too exhausting to keep her out.

Actually, she just felt exhausted. Period.

Sameen took a deep breath to steady herself, but it didn’t stop her knees from buckling finally. Her vision swam and everything blurred together: the bright lights of their subway hideaway, the worried glasses encased gaze of the man known as Harold, and the concern in light brown eyes that threatened to spill over into fear induced tears. Shaw felt like she was floating, like a doctor had put her under a common anesthetic. The only thing tethering her to reality now was the pair of arms that had caught her in a suddenly firm grip and were cradling her against a familiar body above the ground.

“Sameen,” Root’s voice reassured even as the tone broke and shook around the words, “everything’s going to be okay, just stay awake for me. Just stay awake.”

Shaw tried, she did, but she was so tired. She tried to move, to get up but her muscles weren’t listening to her anymore. It was like her entire body had been through so much in the last few hours that it was finally just giving her the bird and completely ignoring her wishes.  

“Just need to take a nap,” Shaw heard herself whisper.

Then everything went ruthlessly dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this has outgrown my original plan for it so it isn't finished yet...here is the promised update. Please enjoy and let me know what you thought of it. :)


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